Although I've been aware of the ever more destructive levels of compression/limiting used over the last 5-10 years (and taken part in discussions here and other places), it only dawned on me recently that I had unconciously practically stopped buying CD's the last year or two..

There are recent releases out there which I would like to own, but with what I've come to expect from modern CD's, I know that an album which I might have 'played to death' over weeks or months in years gone by will simply get boring after a few plays. So I don't buy them. Dynamics, soft/loud contrasts, drama - squashed out of existence.

New Queens Of The Stone Age? Probably a great album - but once bitten .....

I'm increasingly going to exchanges to try and find older releases of albums I want, or even buying vinyl versions of new albums where they're released, as they tend not to be afflicted as badly.

Obviously there are a proportion of buyers who only lsiten to CD's in the car or on personals in noisy environments who couldn't care less and will keep buying, but there must be a lot of others who, like me, are completely disillusioned with this 'loudness fetish' crap and have simply lost interest.

In fact I wonder how much this has contributed to the stagnancy in sales over the last few years that the 'industry' whines about so frequently?

I have to add that I just think that we have Yet Another Reason to buy with our ears.

The recent Sony/BMG payola settlement should, I believe, "settle" (ahem) once and for all any doubts that, in this industry anyway, the tin-hat folks are on to something.

Perhaps someone will start independantly rating things like the dynamic range on recordings. It gets a little dicey here - the very folks who have done this in the past end up being the same publishers who also foist off audio snake oil ($6000 speaker wires).

I do have a Personal Theory: the music is being engineered to be played in cars. Or iPods on noisy subways. In a Just World, music would be mixed for a listening room and the electronics (in personal devices and car stereos) would have a "noisy background" setting that was nothing more than a compressor, IMHO. But the truth is, those of us who are neurotic (I said "us" and include myself before anyone gets all defensive here) enough to have a listening room and/or decent-cans-and-amps are a tiny minority. The "Market" seems to love what is being put out.

Me? When I wanna show a friend "what I'm talkin' about" regarding dynamic range, I set 'em down in my living room, turn off the lights, and roll the "Firebird Suite" from Fantasia 2000. That sucker always wakes 'em up, heh heh...